Portrait of Siamak Ravanbakhsh

Siamak Ravanbakhsh

Core Academic Member
Canada CIFAR AI Chair
Associate Professor, McGill University
Research Topics
Active Learning
AI Alignment
AI for Science
Bayesian Inference
Deep Learning
Generalization
Generative Models
Learning on Graphs
Probabilistic Models
Reasoning
Reinforcement Learning
Representation Learning
Symmetry

Biography

Siamak Ravanbakhsh is an assistant professor at McGill University’s School of Computer Science and a core academic member of Mila – Quebec Artificial Intelligence Institute.

Before joining McGill and Mila, he held a similar position at the University of British Columbia. Prior to that, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the Machine Learning Department and Robotics Institute of Carnegie Mellon University. He completed his PhD at the University of Alberta.

Ravanbakhsh’s research is centred around problems of representation learning, in particular the principled use of geometry, probabilistic inference and symmetry.

Current Students

Master's Research - McGill University
Principal supervisor :
Master's Research - McGill University
Professional Master's - McGill University
PhD - McGill University
Master's Research - McGill University
Research Intern - McGill University
Master's Research - McGill University
Postdoctorate - McGill University

Publications

Machine Learning Advantages in Canadian Astrophysics
Kim Venn
Sébastien Fabbro
Adrian Liu
Gwendolyn Eadie
Sara Ellison
Joanna Woo
JJ Kavelaars
Kwang Moo Yi
Renée Hložek
Jo Bovy
Hossen Teimoorinia
Locke Spencer
The application of machine learning (ML) methods to the analysis of astrophysical datasets is on the rise, particularly as the computing pow… (see more)er and complex algorithms become more powerful and accessible. As the field of ML enjoys a continuous stream of breakthroughs, its applications demonstrate the great potential of ML, ranging from achieving tens of millions of times increase in analysis speed (e.g., modeling of gravitational lenses or analysing spectroscopic surveys) to solutions of previously unsolved problems (e.g., foreground subtraction or efficient telescope operations). The number of astronomical publications that include ML has been steadily increasing since 2010.
With the advent of extremely large datasets from a new generation of surveys in the 2020s, ML methods will become an indispensable tool in astrophysics. Canada is an unambiguous world leader in the development of the field of machine learning, attracting large investments and skilled researchers to its prestigious AI Research Institutions. This provides a unique opportunity for Canada to also be a world leader in the application of machine learning in the field of astrophysics, and foster the training of a new generation of highly skilled researchers.